There is no calamity greater than lavish
desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is not greater disaster than greed.

-- Lao-tzu

S

ARS
has raised its infectious head again in southeastern China. The suspected
cause is the civet cat, prized for its exotic meat. Chinese officials have
ordered the immediate extermination of every captive civet cat in Guangdong
province. The civet cat had been pinpointed as the likely source for the
human contraction of the SARS corona virus earlier and its capture, sale,
and consumption was banned. Business pressures led, however, to the lifting
of the ban. Human health concerns were, in essence, trumped by the pursuit
of profit. It is emblematic of today’s capitalist China.

At one end of Tiananmen Square, just above the
entrance to the Forbidden City, a huge portrait of Mao Zedong, the first
leader of the People’s Republic of China, is prominent. Mao represents the
victory of socialism over feudalism. Yet the China of today is a far cry
from the revolution of the mid-twentieth century. One wonders why the
portrait of Mao still features so prominently at Tiananmen Square. A denial
of Mao, as many Chinese will tell you, would imply undercutting the
legitimacy of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. The upshot of all this is
the oxymoronic absurdity of a Communist Party espousing free market
capitalism.

A final nail in the Chinese revolutionary
coffin was administered late in 2003 when the Communist Party undertook to
amend (or more correctly, undermine) the Constitution to protect private
property rights. The whole concept that property has rights is ludicrous;
everyone understands that property itself has no rights and that what is
actually meant is the protection of the rights of ownership to property.
Nonetheless the assertion that people have rights to ownership of property
is also questionable. The French anarchist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his philosophical examination What is
Property? concluded that while possession is valid ownership was not.
This was immortalized in the phrase: “Property is theft.”

Through the nineteenth century and into the
early twentieth century China represented an exotic land ripe for the
plunder of western imperial buccaneerism. Although the corrupt dynastic
China had been overthrown a new feudalism arose under the Kuomintang (KMT).
The KMT rewarded both its own and western interests. The Chinese peasants
toiled to have the fruits of their labors stolen by the KMT and western
overlords. This fomented dissension and precipitated a communist revolution.
A son of Chinese peasants, Mao Zedong rose to become the leader of the
revolution. World War II intervened and after the Japanese invaders were
defeated, the civil war concluded with the ouster of the KMT. Mao became the
chairman of the central government council of the People's Republic of
China.

There were triumphs and massive failures under
the chairmanship of Mao and after his death the Maoists lost power and
communism gradually withered. Chinese professor Han Deqiang in his paper “Chinese
Cultural Revolution: Failure and Theoretical Originality” examined the
demise of communism in China. Han detailed how from its very beginning the
communist revolutionary government had been infiltrated by a capitalist
faction which had established itself within the bureaucracy. Prominent
among the bureaucrats was Deng Xiaoping.

After the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China, many cadres gradually became bureaucrats fighting for
higher ranks and better rewards. They turned their working units into their
“turfs” while lack of education in general and technical knowledge in
particular led them commit incredible mistakes. The rectification movement
launched in 1957 in China was aimed at consolidating and educating party
cadres, and eliminating bureaucrats with the help of common people and the
force of democracy. Since the beginning of this movement, people responded
enthusiastically to Mao’s call, and spoke up against party leaders at all
levels. An old friend of mine, who was in his twenties and worked in Sichuan
province at the time, told me that only then did he feel that the sun came
out of clouds and shone brightly. This was definitely the truth feeling of
an ordinary people. Selfish cadres were under fierce attack by the mass,
feeling very much nervous. Unfortunately, some intellectuals went too far as
to deny the leadership of the communist party, demanding that they take the
office. Mao had to counterattack them and labeled them as “rightists” (a
term equal to reactionaries who should be prosecuted at the time). However,
Deng Xiaoping, who was the then secretary-general of the party, maximized
the movement in an effort to encourage officials at all levels to attack
those leftists who sincerely criticized party bureaucrats. And his effort in
fact strengthened the power of bureaucracy.

At first Mao was not completely aware of the
bureaucratic infiltration. That came later; writes Han:

Mao launched during 1963-1966 a nationwide
campaign called “socialist education movement,” also known as “four
clean-ups movement” to purify politics, economy, organization and ideology.

It was during this movement that Mao finally
identified the existence of a group of powers that be within the communist
party who intended to take a capitalist-bound road.

Han found that whereas capitalists exploit
people by manipulating capital, bureaucrats exploit by means of power. He
describes an alarmed Mao as fighting to preserve the ideals of the
revolution.

The way Mao chose to achieve this goal was, on
the one hand, to initiate the so-called “great democracy,” a bottom-up
movement which allowed the establishment of various spontaneous
organizations engaging in “voicing free speeches through big-character
posters. On the other hand, he called for a top-down mass education of the
people to “criticize selfishness and attacking revisionism.” Theoretically
speaking, as the means and the end respectively, these two measures are
actually the only method to persuade and force bureaucrats back to alliance
with the people.

Han’s version differs markedly from that
predominant in both western and Chinese modern history. On how a
dictatorship of the proletariat fits in with the serious consideration of a
bottom-up democracy in Maoist philosophy, Han responded:

It’s a most complicated problem; I don't think
it could be explained in a short answer. We must go back into the
international communist movement and Chinese special history.

When democracy should be combined with
an egalitarian society, we may notice how difficult the problem is, and
understand what Mao seeked.

Han describes Mao as an icon around which the
revolutionaries could rally; the better-educated bureaucratic class with
more resources, however, was able to defeat Maoist idealism. The
revolutionaries having acquitted themselves well during the war floundered
at Mao’s callfor an “inner struggle against egoism.” Mao was alone
at the top and found himself with no one to rely on.

Han spares no praise for Mao. He writes, “Mao
Zedong -- had great vision and capability with consistent perseverance.
Reviewing various types of idealistic organizations in history, rarely can
we find one leader comparable to Mao.” The embodiment of the revolution’s
ideology in one person was, however, in large part, its failure.

Explains Han.

Unfortunately, history of revolutions in all
countries proves that the realization of public ownership of productive
means does not automatically result in a revolution of values. On the
contrary, ideologies of private ownership continue to erode every corner
stone of the revolution, turning the revolution and people’s power into
stages for the performance of such ideologies, leading to ultimate
transformation of public ownership into private ownership. The theory
proposed by Mao on the necessity of a continuous revolution under
proletariat dictatorship implies a recognition of this possibility: “Class
struggles between the proletariat and the capitalist, between the two
ideologies and between different political forces will be long-lasting,
tortuous, and sometimes even very fierce. Proletariat class is bound to
transform the world according to its worldview while capitalist class also
does the same with theirs. In this respect, victory of socialism over
capitalism is not truly guaranteed.”

Neither could the failure of the revolution be
pinned solely on the Communist Party. A revolution should not be considered
as a panacea in itself. It is necessary for the people to nurture their
revolution so that they might all reap the benefits thereof. Human nature
being what it is though, many saw it as an opportunity to become a new
exploiting class.

As long as every individual bases his or her
action on self-interest, the society is divided into two classes: the
exploiting and the exploited, or capitalists and proletariats. Everyone can
use productive means, power, technology or knowledge to serve self-interest,
therefore becoming a member of the capitalist class and a supporter of class
society.

Han does not see Mao and the bureaucratic
class as being solely culpable for the downfall of the revolution. The
people bear a responsibility. Consequently when Mao passed away so did one
of the last standard bearers of a republic for the Chinese workers. He would
serve as the lightning rod for all the ills of the post-revolutionary
period. Han counters:

Mao was absolutely altruistic, loyal to the
people and the ideal of communism. He betrayed the bureaucratic clique and
single-handedly staged that dynamic Cultural Revolution. That is why this
bureaucratic clique restored its power as soon as Mao died in 1976, and
staged both at home and abroad a persistent campaign through the media in
which Mao was demonized. So capitalism came back to China, turning it into a
new economic colony of the United States.

China has come full circle. The Communist
Party members have mutated into the new bourgeoisie. The family and friends
of the Communist Party make out like bandits; meanwhile a burgeoning chasm
in the distribution of wealth separates the villagers from the city
dwellers. Private ownership of property threatens to entrench these
inequalities.

For a revolution to succeed it should be
motivated not just against the injustices of the contemporary system but
also be rooted in the ideals of a just system. Han considers:

[A] society dominated by private ownership …
plants individualism and selfishness deep into adults’ mind to the extent
that they become the basis for their acts, and enables them to resist, even
rebel against the new social system. Compared with such forces, idealism
that promotes public ownership and altruism can exert almost no significant
influence. When the proletariat class launches a revolution, they are
motivated by resistance of oppression rather than idealism. They want to
“overthrow landlords and have land of their own.” Such a motivation is also
self-driven. Only very few leading intellectuals are able to go beyond their
own material benefit, betray their own class in search of an ideal society.

Han considers that the
failure of Marxism in both China and Russia was a failure of the
revolutionaries to follow Marxist theory. The moribund feudalisms in China
and Russia were not ready to institutionalize the revolutions and as such
were “prematures of history.”

The success of the
revolution depends more on the character of the people. Han finds: “[T]he
orientation of an individual’s values is not determined by the political and
economic statues he or she enjoys in society, but the general attitude he or
she holds toward the society.”

Professor Qumei She, while
“impressed” by Han’s “high opinion of Mao as an idealist,” is contrarian.
She opines:

[T]he noble concept of socialism/communism
seems to go against the human nature of selfishness. Its success relies on
the assumption that human beings can be taught to be altruistic. May be so,
but it must be a very hard task, as most people are selfish by nature most
of the time. My limited knowledge of capitalism tells me that capitalism
goes with human nature: it encourages and rewards personal success and
self-fulfillment. It can lead to irrational competition and great waste, so
can socialism and communism, I think. For example, the great waste of talent
and resources due to constant class struggle and the policy of "equal
poverty."

Han is also skeptical of human nature. In tune
with Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the model of participatory economics (parecon)
as propounded by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel also envisages
intellectuals sharing in the manual labor. Han finds the four key features
of parecon (equity, solidarity, diversity, and participatory
self-management) to be “important and necessary, but not sufficient.”

Han’s radical solution is nothing less than “a
new human being be formed who is altruistic, considering the whole society
always above himself, and consequently a new culture be formed.”

The renowned Chinese philosopher Mengzi (Mencius)
was more sanguine. Said he, “Water, it is true, is not inclined to be either
east or west, but does it have no preference for high or low? Goodness is to
human nature like flowing downward is to water. Just as water can be forced
up, people can be led to bad, but this is not their natural inclination.”

Kim Petersen
lives in Nova Scotia and is a regular contributor to Dissident Voice
newsletter. He previously lived and taught in China. He can be reached at:
kimpetersen@gyxi.dk